Thirty-five years ago, Steven Van Zandt and his protest group Artists United Against Apartheid united to record “Sun City”.
What is Sun City?
“Sun City” is a 1985 protest song Van Zandt wrote in opposition to the Apartheid in South Africa. Sun City is a resort that was the target of a United Nations cultural boycott in protest of apartheid. Despite this, many American and British artists played at Sun City, effectively endorsing South Africa’s racist regime.
The track featured an all-star recording ensemble of artists from every genre of music, from Run DMC to Miles Davis and Bono, who all sang on the track. Van Zandt says it took two weeks to mix and wasn’t a break-out hit at first. “We hit our own apartheid on radio. Radio felt it was too black for white radio and too white for black radio,” said Van Zandt.
“The industry didn’t want hip-hop on the record”, said Steven Van Zandt
Van Zandt met resistance from the industry when it came to who would be on the song. According to him, industry executives were unpleased with his intentions to incorporate rappers on the track. (Hip-hop) was a very, very, very controversial thing at the time – rappers were not respected,” said Van Zandt.
Run DMC, DJ Kool Herc, Grandmaster Melle Mel, Afrika Bambaataa, and Kurtis Blow were among the hip-hop artists who appeared on “Sun City,”. “When rap started I thought this was extremely important and we need to really endorse this and put them on the ‘Sun City’ record even though the industry was really in disbelief that I would put Melle Mel next to Miles Davis and Run DMC next to Bob Dylan,” Van Zandt said. “They didn’t understand it.”
Artists United Against Apartheid
Those hip hop acts joined with rock, R&B, jazz and Latin stars Bruce Springsteen, Clarence Clemons, Bob Dylan, Miles Davis, George Clinton, Bono, as well as many more. All in all, the album and single raised over a million dollars for anti-apartheid causes.”It completely re-energized the whole anti-apartheid movement,” Van Zandt recalled, “which had kind of hit a wall at that point and was not getting much traction.”.